Posted
by
timothyon Tuesday November 22, 2011 @09:47AM
from the spend-all-you-want-they'll-print-more dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "VOA reports that the latest effort to cut the U.S. government's debt apparently has ended in failure as leaders of the special 12-member debt reduction committee plan to announce that they failed in their mandate from lawmakers to trim the federal debt by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Democrats and Republicans blame each other for the collapse of the effort. 'Our Democratic friends were never able to do the entitlement reforms,' said Republican Senator Jon Kyl. 'They weren't going to do anything without raising taxes.' Democratic Senator Patty Murray, one of the committee's co-chairs, says that the Republicans' position on taxes was the sticking point. 'The wealthiest Americans who earn over a million a year have to share too. And that line in the sand, we haven't seen Republicans willing to cross yet,' Now in the absence of an agreement, $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts to domestic and defense programs are set to take effect starting in January, 2013, and the lack of a deal will deprive President Barack Obama of a vehicle for extending a payroll tax cut and insurance benefits for unemployed Americans, which expire at the end of the year." (Though the official deadline for the committee's hoped-for plan is tomorrow — the 23d — they were to have provided it for review 48 hours prior.)

I can see where the right-wingers think it's a trollish comment, but the message is sound. I've been to Tea Party rallies, there's nothing but racism to be found there. "Obama's a socialist" from the same guys carrying around pictures of him and his family with chimpanzee heads pasted on, guys with barely-concealed KKK tattoos, and don't forget the one with the "Werez da birf certifikit hez a muzlim nigger" sign.

Yes they were. The vast majority of those kinds of signs that showed up at the rallies were clearly labeled as being from the LaRouchians, who, having little in common with the TPers, sought to capitalize on the exposure the rallies were getting for their own goals.

As for what you linked to - yeah, that person screwed up. Though personally I was not aware that chimpanzee/monkey could be considered a racial insult; more of a general insult about competency or perhaps being a show trick controlled by someone else.

Ok, first of all, that's an email. Not a sign. Also, Marylin Davenport was roundly vilified by Tea Party members for that email, and was (if I remember correctly) asked to resign from her position. I don't know what ever came of it, but her's was a view that was NEVER mainstream among the tea party.

Also, there have been some blatantly racist signs at Tea Party rallies, but if you back the picture out a bit and get some context, you would discover that the horrible signs are being carried by people that aren't part of the Tea Party rally, and are often either fringe hanger-on groups, or left-wing infiltrators.

There is plenty of video out there of these people being shouted and chased out of the tea party rallies [thegatewaypundit.com], while the MSM follows taking pictures only of the fringe people and ignoring the rest of the rally.

Heck, back when the rallies were in full swing there were several topics ongoing at KOS and SA about just that. Crashing the Tea Party [leftcoastrebel.com] rallies with racist signs [biggovernment.com] to try and get press time.

Sorry, but the evidence of my own eyes and ears when visiting Tea Party events - and no, I was not there to "infiltrate", but to find out if what I had been seeing was truly representative of the movement - showed me precisely how racist these people are. A local buddy of mine with a latino-sounding name (actually of Spanish descent, as in his father is from Spain) was roundly booed and got shouts of "go back to Mexico" from this filth merely for showing up - and he was there because he's a registered Republican candidate for the state senate and was trying to get votes for the primary!

I'm sorry for the way your friend was treated. (Who was he? I'd like to know how he did in his race.) Was this the entire crowd booing him or was it just a few people? Where was the event, and do you remember the date?

Because I've been to several Tea Party events (A couple here in Buffalo NY, a couple in Rochester NY and one in Pittsburgh PA) and I've never seen anything like that.

In fact, I haven't seen ANY racism. I've seen a good mix of races, with white, black, asian and latino all standing together espousing the ideals of limited government, capitalism and Freedom. All protesting Obamacare, and mixing together freely and without reservation.

I have also seen the unbridled hate and invective that was thrown at us from the counter-protesters, seen leftists make "mock charges" at us to try and provoke a physical confrontation and have the Police have to warn them off, but I have not seen a single racist sign or epithet thrown from the Tea Party side.

Obviously your friend had a bad experience, and while I can't speak for all Tea Partiers, I can certainly say that kind of behavior would not be tolerated at any Tea Party rally I was at.

Well, I'm down in the south. You know, where the Republican base is, with the "southern strategy" that you people haven't given up since Nixon came up with it.

I don't know what you're seeing in your neck of the woods. But I can go with what I've seen time and again, and I can go with what I've seen reported on time and again. And I can go by what I get from the local mailings, and robocalls, and emails from the local Republican party and "Tea Party" politicians.

Racism is strong down here. It's only gotten stronger since the election of Obama, and anyone who thinks that there isn't a very, very heavy segment of the Republican base right now who are opposing Obama primarily because they have a racial thing going on, well, they're not paying attention.

This isn't an isolated event. At the rallies down here, the "speakers" regularly get up and hurl invective at anyone who speaks a foreign language. They regularly insinuate that anyone of latino descent is "un-american", is "refusing to assimilate", or is connected to organized crime and drugs merely because of their skin color or racial makeup. There's a major problem with unequal treatment of people by race when it comes to the police, too - not in my state, but in a relevant news story, there's the race-based cop shakedowns of Tenaha, Texas [wikipedia.org]. What most people don't realize is that in the American south, this kind of stuff is considered par for the course - a news story about it isn't "oh my god this is out of place", it's "these guys got a little too greedy and got caught." And then there are instances like this [cnn.com].

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Tea Partiers, when they think there's a camera on them, insist that much of their platform is about "smaller government", or "law and order", or other high-minded principles. When you get them off camera, when you get them talking freely with a couple beers, then it's a different story. THEN, you find out that the "smaller government" means "too many people with dark skin living in poverty get food stamps or government assistance, how dare they come here, they should just go back to mexico" or that "law and order" means "I don't want those dark skinned spanish speaking people living in my neighborhood or sending a kid to the local schools, and if one of their kids asks my daughter for a date I'm getting out the shotgun." And the sad part is, all I have to do to hear them go on like this is show up at the local bar where they hold their "Tea Party meetup" events, keep my mouth shut and ears open, and drink a beer while they rant to each other.

from the same guys carrying around pictures of him and his family with chimpanzee heads pasted on

I love the fact that everyone was forwarding the pictures comparing Bush to a chimp, but anyone who compares Obama to a chimp is a racist. The celebrity chimps website was shut down over accusations of racism, even though most of the celebrities that they turned into chips were white.

Awwwww.... does the concept of context escape you? Pobrecito...
Let me lay it out for you - chimp is both an English language word describing a type of monkey, AND a racial slur. Which is implied is determined by the situation and surrounding language, a process known as "context."
An extremely simple example - If I were to say "Your mom," the meaning would be radically different if you had said "Who do you think should make the cake for my birthday," or "Man, I'd like to bang-"

> No one in the US has had slaves in a LOOONG time.Really? Slavery ended, let's say, in 1865. A child born into slavery in 1855 may have had a child in 1900, who may have had a child in 1945.

There are people alive today who personally knew former slaves.

There are people alive today who personally experienced the Jim Crow south.

There are people alive today who, because of their skin color, were unable to serve in the military as anything but kitchen staff. Prohibited from playing professional sports. Denied entry into their church's priesthood.

It's nice to think it's all past history, but I'm sorry to inform you that there are still too many open wounds to call the problem eradicated.

We might be able to move on sooner by healing the wounds than by ignoring them and letting them fester.

The problem is that no amount of "oversight" will ever be enough because you are essentially asking the government to police itself. You simply cannot separate the oversight body from the rest of the government without creating a quasi-police state with a bunch of unelected people having "oversight" over the elected ones. That sounds very much like Tyranny to me.

Alternately, you could create an elected "oversight" body, but then why have the original governing body in the first place? Oversight is a black hole of ever growing government and ever disappearing money.

The solution is to shrink the size of government and take power OUT of it's hands until it is back to the teeny tiny size it was intended to be by the Founders. Most of it's current duties should be devolved back to the state, local, and personal level.

Umm... The person I was replying to was referring to adding ADDITIONAL oversight to our EXISTING government framework. They were implying that our system of checks and balances as stated in the Constitution was inadequate and we needed yet another layer of oversight to make it work.

My point was that adding more layers for oversight doesn't help because it doesn't fix the central issue: Too much central government.

If you read the Constitution and the writings of our founding fathers (Do you have your copy of the Federalist Papers? Thomas Payne's "Common Sense"? The combined writings of Thomas Jefferson? I have mine right here.) you would see that while they differed on some of the specifics, the founders envisioned a LIMITED central government who's role was kept at a minimum. Defending the country, ensuring peace and unimpeded economic traffic between the states (the infamous "commerce clause") and providing for jurisprudence over country-wide legal issues. that was it.

Our modern government has grown FAR beyond the original intent of a simple framework to hold the states together and into a behemoth that reaches tentacles into every aspect of our daily lives. One literally cannot do anything that is not in some way impacted by, regulated by or taxed by our monstrous, over sized, behemoth federal government. This is what needs fixing.

Ultimately, we must come to the realization that the promise of socialism; That the central government can fill every need, take away every want and create a utopian "socially just" society is a lie. It isn't possible, and it's high time that after 100 years of it in America we need to simply stop trying for it. If we don't, we each get to personally experience the reality of socialism's "end game". Financial collapse, widespread poverty, and Tyranny. We will all be equal. Equally poor, equally oppressed, and equally lost.

Better to have the "inequality" of Capitalism and get an "unequal" share of it's blessings, than have an equal share of the misery of socialism.

the founders envisioned a LIMITED central government who's role was kept at a minimum. Defending the country, ensuring peace and unimpeded economic traffic between the states (the infamous "commerce clause") and providing for jurisprudence over country-wide legal issues. that was it.

What you're forgetting is the WHY. They envisioned keeping things "local" where possible; more to the point, they wanted things kept to their definition of "local" in what could easily done in a week's travel. None of the original 13 colonies took more than a week to ride on horse from one end to the other, and some took significantly less.

Fast-forward to today. You can hop on a jet, and cross the country in hours. You can road-trip it in less than a week. Riding hard and trading driving shifts, you can road-trip New York to Los Angeles on the freeways in 1 day 21 hours (so assume maybe 2 and a half days to add in gas stops, pit stops, and food breaks). Communication speeds are even faster; you can get real-time communication with an amazing amount of the world over phone or internet at any time, infrastructure-wise.

The reason for the clauses of the constitution concerning interstate commerce and interstate relations grew, not because the government power was growing, but because the nation - communication and travel wise - simply "became smaller." The founding fathers would have taken an area like Texas and forcibly broken it up into multiple states, because they would never have seen it as viable to have one big "Texas State" with that much land mass - but even between 1776 and 1845, communication and travel technologies had made it viable to allow Texas to enter as a state without being broken up.

They also never considered what the march of the industrial revolution would do. Sure, they never considered the idea of something like the EPA - but they were DUMPING THEIR SHIT OUT THE WINDOW INTO THE STREETS; Thomas Crapper's company didn't start mass producing flush toilets until the 1880s. They never considered the need for something like the EPA and environmental regulations, because they never considered the idea of a factory dumping so much toxic waste into a river or down into the groundwater reservoir that the water became beyond-undrinkable and beyond-unlivable.

I could go on, but I hope the point is clear. The founding fathers envisioned "limited government" based on scale of communications. As time has marched forward, communications and travel technology have changed, industrial technology has changed, and the sheer mobility of humanity has changed, the federal government has had to take a more active role simply because the states are, by virtue of being "so close together" and interacting so frequently, in conflict more and more and more and more.

You don't believe me? Think about this: what happens if we leave environmental regulations to the states? Chances are, Illinois or Minnesota passes something really fucking lax, and the next thing you know Missouri and Louisiana are up in arms because the Mississippi and their drinking and irrigation water is being fouled.

While I can appreciate your position, your assumption that the founders set up the Republic to have limited government because of communications restrictions is specious at best.

I can prove it to you by simple extending your argument to the planet as a whole.

It used to take over a YEAR to travel around the globe. now one merely needs to hop on a plane, and with a few changes and layovers, you can circumnavigate the globe in a few days. if you have enough money, you can hitch a ride on a Russian rocket and circle the globe at several thousand miles an hour in LEO if you want.

Communications across the planet are now as instantaneous as talking across the room. I regularly have online discussions with complete strangers that I will probable never meet from foreign lands that I have never visited. Something the Founders could not have imagined even in their wildest dreams.

And yet, I hear no rational calls for One World Government. If the speed of communications and travel is the ONLY reason for a limited American government, why not extend that to the entire world? It's not as though the various countries of the world aren't in constant conflict with one another. Why not a large, strong central government to rule the whole world?

Of course, we already tried that. It was called Fascism, and then Communism. (Brother ideologies, really.) and both have been roundly defeated and are rightly now ridiculed as monstrous and evil.

Then of course, there are the actual writings of the Founders, who frequently stated their desire for a LIMITED government. Not because of communications, but because it was wise.

Behold their words:

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Ludlow, September 6, 1824

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." - Patrick Henry

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfareâ¦ The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America." - Alexander Hamilton

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." - Thomas Jefferson

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson

"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there

You spend a lot of time on Jefferson and Madison; the quote from Franklin really is inappropriate in its entirety given that it was written long before the Constitution, as part of a letter to delegates advocating secession, and tarring British loyalists as "giving up liberty" for the "security" of the British empire. Jefferson was off in France and had absolutely shit-all to do with the writing of the Constitution. Madison, meanwhile, is MUCH more in favor of centralized government than you give him credit for; the bulk of his writings (which come from the Federalist, not the ANTI-Federalist) are a defense of vesting power in a centralized, federal government and not a call to strip the federal government of power and simply re-create the old Articles of Confederacy.

But, since you've proven only an ability to pull quotations out of context and absolutely zero understanding of the process in which the Constitution let me clue you in: the basics of it, including the separation of powers, were the production of the Virginia delegation led by Edmund Randolph. The bicameral legislature was pulled from British tradition, while the idea of power-against-power as checks and balances came heavily from the philosophical writings of John Locke. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were heavy proponents of "proportional only" representation in both houses, and were ruled down by the smaller states before the compromise of the Senate/House division. William Paterson, a STRONG federalist, proposed the competing unicameral "two representatives per state" option that eventually became the Senate. Gouverneur Morris, who wrote the preamble, was also a strong federalist who had roundly decried the antisocial behavior of the states towards each other under the Articles - he had previously been a congressional representative during the Articles, but was defeated for reelection when anti-federalism became popular in New York.

It was a power envisioned by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, even though it wasn't explicitly spelled out. The point of ruling a law "unconstitutional" really is one of recognition: If the court system refuses to acknowledge the validity of a law and therefore doesn't even recognize that the law has been created through a constitutional process, that law really doesn't exist as far as the court system is concerned. Yes, it may appear on the books of statutory law, but effectively a single citation to a higher court judicial opinion (not even the supreme court) invalidating that law renders ineffective any prosecution under that law.

That was the whole point of Marbury v. Madison, so far as in that case even the filing of the case before the Supreme Court was unconstitutionally done and therefore it was unconstitutional for such a petition to have been granted in the first place. This was also a constitutional crises so far as the only legal means to enforce a law was to perform an act that in itself was contrary to the U.S. Constitution. The law under question in that case, the Judiciary Act of 1789, had several provisions that simply were ill advised to even be put into legislation and most significant was an unconstitutional expansion of the U.S. Supreme Court itself and its authority. To have ruled in favor of Marbury would have essentially forced the court to ignore the U.S. Constitution altogether and to have considered statutory law alone on the presumption that it was the domain exclusively of the U.S. Congress to determine the scope of the Constitution. In that sense, I think it was a very wise move for the court to have taken at the time, even if this decision might be abused in other contexts.

These aholes should just compromise. Raise taxes and cut spending. Do both. You can't agree? Well then why not fix the problem quickly by agreeing to these two points that would solve the problem in a hurry? Sure, I am not an economist, but I bet my understanding of solving the debt problem is just about as good as a senator or congressman who spends his time raising money all day, rather than trying to figure out this country's problems.

(yes I could be very wrong, and i look forward to more intelligent replies below, but at least i have proposed a solution right there! much better than 90% of our leaders....)

That's what they were supposed to do. The committee's mandate was to look at both where taxes could be raised, and spending cut.

Unfortunately, the Republicans are currently held hostage by the retard wing of the Republican Party, the Tea Tards, who are gung-ho on the "Grover Norquist Pledge" to never raise taxes on anyone who has enough money to donate to the Republican party and their various slush funds. Nevermind the fact that taxes on the rich are lower than they've been since the Truman administration. The end result is that the committee was going to fail, because the "party line" of the Republicans has grown under the "leadersship" of talk radio zealots like Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh to be "no compromise, no sensible solutions, our-taliban-way-or-anarchy."

David Frum said it best: the Republicans have completely lost touch with reality [nymag.com]. I encourage you to read the whole thing, he makes a lot of sense and it explains quite well how insane the Republican party has gotten.

Richard Nixon was denounced as a fascist by the baby boomers in the late 60s. What's he remembered for now other than Watergate? He opened diplomatic relations with Chinese Communists, instituted wage and price controls by the government to check inflation, and ended the war in Vietnam. He would be thrown out of the Republican Party today for being more liberal than Bill Clinton.

It is amazing how much the Republicans, and those same boomers, have shifted to the right.

Of course, you also forgot "Abandoned Bretton Woods, starting us on the road to the current economic mess,

The current economic mess has fuck-all to do with Bretton Woods, which had collapsed for all practical purposes long before the Nixon administration formally abandoned it, and is more directly tied to the the abandonment of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 repealing the provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 that were designed to prevent conflicts of interests between investment and commercial banking -- because of the direct role such conflicts had had in the financial collapse that produced the Great Depression.

Its perhaps not surprising that the behavior resulting from removing those provisions directly contributed again to a major collapse.

I read the article and was amazed at how spot on David Frun was in analyzing the republican party's woes (thus America's woes). His commentary about Fox News and the effect commercialized press has had on the party was chilling. The Coulters, Limbaughs, Becks, Hannitys of the sound media have only one interest, making money. Sadly, their method is to foment angst, division, and distrust so people will come back for more, the modern day owners of the coliseum. Thumbs up, thumbs down, it does not matter to them as long as the people come back to see the next show.

For me, it is a sad day in this country when the First Lady of the United States of America is booed in public. A woman who has tried to do good things for people in this country. A mother with two good children. A representative of our country. This is a serious sign of disrespect brought about by the non-stop name calling, truth-bending, and derogatory statements from Fox, Rush, and company. Perhaps they need to watch "The Ox Bow Incident" to realize what happens with uncontrolled mobs. We are becoming the Mob the "Right" should be most afraid of. One of the best lines in the article:

for it is the richest who have the most interest in political stability, which depends upon broad societal agreement that the existing distribution of rewards is fair and reasonable. If the social order comes to seem unjust to large numbers of people, what happens next will make Occupy Wall Street look like a street fair.

Indeed, the mob is fickle, the mob is anarchy, the mob is and will be a creation of the radical party who's interests are of Self first, Party second, and country a distant third.

By the same token, everyone can agree that spending cuts are necessary. Except the Dems of course. Note that the biggest proponent of NOT cutting Defense Spending is Obama's Secretary of Defense, not the Republicans

Hold on...this [informationweek.com] isn't the Secretary of Defense suggesting a spending cuts? What about Obama suggesting Defense Spending Cuts Here [defense.gov]. It seems your information is wrong. Every proposal that the Democrats have made included defense spending cuts. It was the Republicans who refused to cut defense spending.

Frum was hawkish on Iraq, because the evidence on Iraq was sound (at least, sound enough if you fell for Saddam's bluster, a point which has been lost on the "no blood for oil" crowd: Saddam was desperately trying to prop up the illusion that he had a WMD program for fear that the Saudis or Iranians would decide he'd outlived his usefulness and come in to take Iraq from him themselves).

Don't you mean "if you fell for Saddam's bluster and ignored the reports of the weapons inspectors on the ground"?

Hans Blix* couldn't find any chemical or biological weapons.ElBaradei** couldn't find any evidence Saddam had rebuilt a nuclear program.Cheney said they were wrongHistory tells us that Blix and ElBaradei were right.

*at the time, head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency**at the time, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency

It's a hard truth. Ronald Reagan famously quipped, when asked about his political party change, that "I didn't leave the Democratic party, the party left me." In their rush towards reactionary fascism over the past 4-5 years, the Republicans today have done the same to more than half their number.

That's pretty much it. I know many self-professed Republicans that are completely disgusted by their own party right now. Many of them are sick and tired of the moral majority bullshit that they're caught up in. The crusades against gay marriage. The crusades against repealing DADT and letting gays serve openly in the military. The crusades against abortion. The attempted shoehorning of Christianity into every corner of government...

Personally, I blame the Tea Party. Until Obama got elected and the Tea Party went apoplectic over the idea that their patron saint, Sarah Palin, didn't win the election, the Republican Party was a hell of a lot more reasonable. That's pretty much dead and buried, they're on a scorched-earth campaign, now. I see it with my own two eye every single day here in Wisconsin, where the Republican Party has been falling all over itself doing "whatever it takes" to prevent a recall of Scott Walker and the loss of control of our State Senate. They pass voter ID laws because of alleged "rampant fraud" they can't back up, then when the UW starts issuing free ID's to students so that they can vote, they howl in opposition about how they should be forced to go to the DMV to get an ID. Meanwhile they're cutting the hours of those DMV's left and right, ostensibly for "budgetary reasons", although boy, it sure does help make it even harder to get your ID so you can vote. Also, they legally can't charge you if you're getting an ID for voting purposes (it would be a poll tax and thus unconstitutional), so this is costing the state millions of dollars, so then they bitch that people shouldn't get free ID's anyway. Not only that, but in order to get the free ID, you have to check a box, and they mandated that DMV employees are not allowed to mention that the ID is free if it is for voting purposes. They're trying to force their newly redrawn district maps be used in future recalls, district maps that go so far as to literally displace democrats from the district they represent and thus force them to move, in effect disenfranchising whole swaths of these communities who would no longer get a say in recalling a representative they elected.

I know that the Democrats are guilty of playing their games, too, but I'm just so sick of all of it I could throw up. Time to call a mulligan on this entire government and start over with The United States of America 2.0.

Um, I remember Obamacare taking a year to get through, with the dems extending compromise after compromise and getting nothing in return from across the aisle, before finally passing a watered-down mostly-unworkable proposal in exasperation.

And I'll see your Solyndra and raise you a Rapiscan, a Halliburton, and a Blackwater.

"The Republicans proposed a plan that would have raised taxes by eliminating deductions while lowering marginal rates (thus raising effective rates). "

The plan the Republicans proposed lowered taxes on the richest people in the country (lowering the top rate possibly to 28% from the current 35%). Logic dictates that if this plan truly does generate any revenue at all it will be at the expense of the middle and lower classes paying more in taxes. The Democrats and a significant majority of Americans believe the richest people in our country should pay their fair share of the taxes and they believe they are not currently paying a fair amount. Why would the Democrats even consider such a proposal?

In regards to your comment on "mythical spending cuts" I believe you're being disingenuous and not fairly representing the opposing viewpoint. The fact that Democrats are offering any cuts at all to social programs is a true act of compromise. Again, many Democrats and a majority of the American people do not support any cuts to these programs.

In regards to my claims about what the American people believe or support please do some research on recent polling about social safety net cuts and taxes. Many polls have been done by a variety of sources and the result has been very consistent.

When you make $50,000 a year, and you've got $48,000 on the credit card. You need a raise and you need to turn off cable, internet, stop eating out, and pay off that credit card.

And the great thing is, once you do it, you find you've got about $1,000 a month more money to spend. [snip]

This home-spun shit really gets on my tits. It ignores the enormous scale effects which differentiate national economics from household economics. It's the same category of error as not understanding the cube-square law in biology. A national economy in which everyone, including the government, pays down debt and stops spending is an economy that is shrinking. When economies shrink, demand for goods and services shrink, tax take falls, and companies are forced to lay off workers... there's no point in ignoring this reality just because it doesn't fit your homely philosophising.

The Democrats were willing to cut spending a little and raise taxes a lot. The Republicans were willing to cut spending a lot (but not on their programs) and raise taxes only on the middle class.

The whole thing was doomed from the start, the only time "bipartisianship" works is when both parties get to increase the power of government and fuck over everyone else. It's uncanny how, now that it's fallen apart, the Republicans are already rushing to break their promise of automatic spending cuts (but only on their programs). What principle! Of course, it's not without precedent, it's just like claiming that Medicare is saving money through cuts in doctors' pay that Congress cancels year after year.

"The Democrats were willing to cut spending a little and raise taxes a lot"

Your facts are in error. The Democrats were on record offering a 17-1 ratio of cuts to revenue increases. Unless you've redefined a "little" and a "lot" in an interesting and misleading way, you're wrong.

The Ds were willing to cut $3 of government for every $1 of tax increase.

By what yard stick? The latest Dem proposal was 1 trillion in tax increases, 1 trillion in cuts, and 300 billion in stimulus spending. And of the 1 trillion in cuts, only 200 billion are from mandatory spending. So 1 trillion new dollars from taxes plus 300 billion from stimulus == 1.3 trillion in demanded concessions from Republicans vs 200 billion in mandatory spending reductions.
I'm not seeing the 3 to 1 ratio you're claiming, certainly not in relation to mandatory spending (which is what Republicans care most about -- they're looking for actual structural changes to the entitlement system, not a pittance of cuts). Even ignoring the "location of the cuts", it's still 1.3 trillion of revenue increase/additional spending vs 1 trillion in cuts. That's still nowhere near 3 to 1.

The point everyone is missing is that the committee DID make a choice - a cowardly one at best. By punting they essentially chose the automatic spending cuts and can blame each other for what comes of it. We truly have no real leaders in Congress or the Whitehouse right now. The control of special interests in government has given us crony capitalism at all levels. We need to fix this asap.

I was actually impressed with the idea of automatic spending cuts, especially with Republicans putting their sacred cow of Defense spending on the table. I was certain the committee wouldn't reach a deal since they previously rejected the Democrat's offer of 3 to 1 spending cuts to revenue increases [nytimes.com] and with Obama finally showing some backbone, so I was really curious to see how the automatic cuts would go into effect legislatively.

Turns out the next step will be making sure those cuts don't happen [wired.com]. Because, while Congess can't agree on how to cut spending, they can apparently agree on how to keep spending in place.

I wish America had a system that allowed viable third party candidates... but, as it stands now,Americans will have to choose between corrupt and corrupter in 2012. We are so screwed.

The Republicans have signed a pledge [atr.org] that they will never vote to raise taxes on anybody for any reason whatsoever. If they violate that pledge, the head of the organization who created it can and will ensure they lose their seat by cutting off their campaign funding. So they really can't agree to raise taxes.

When it comes to spending cuts, the big-ticket items are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the military. Any serious cuts need to affect one of those 4 items. The Democrats have been elected for decades with pledges to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid at all costs - it's their party's signature program for the last 75 years or so, so they really can't cut any of those. The Republicans have been elected for decades with pledges to protect military manufacturing jobs in their district, so they really can't cut any of those.

So in short, no they really can't, not without betraying everything they claim to stand for.

Social Security is completely separate. Pays for itself, and has trillions in surplus. Medicare and Medicaid would also pay for themselves, had W not created a massive entitlement via the drug program without raising the tax to pay for it.

The US debt problem IS a revenue problem. Look at the chart [huffingtonpost.com]- the biggest contributor to the debt going forward is the Bush tax cut.

Social Security is completely separate. Pays for itself, and has trillions in surplus.

Well, yes and no.

The yes part is that under current law, you're absolutely right.

The no part is that the SSA, in order to access that surplus, has to demand payment on the loans it made to the general treasury, and the people in control of the general treasury don't want to pay them back and have an army to back them up.

The Republicans have signed a pledge [atr.org] that they will never vote to raise taxes on anybody for any reason whatsoever. If they violate that pledge, the head of the organization who created it can and will ensure they lose their seat by cutting off their campaign funding.

In other words, they have been blatantly bribed. They have signed a pledge admitting that they have been bribed.

If the idiots in congress had actually done something (other than raise taxes) back in the early 80's when the NCSSR declared that social security would become insolvent, or in 1994 when Gingrich et.al. were making noise about it, or maybe even as late as 2000 when Gore made it a core part of his platform, then we could have had serious social security reform. The baby boomers would have had time to adjust their retirement plans and deal with the changes.

It's too late now. The boomers are already retiring, and it isn't right to pull the rug out from underneath them after the government has been promising them their money back (they paid into the program after all). Raising taxes is the only option for social security now. Which sucks for my generation, but at least I have time to plan around it.

Anyone who thought this committee would produce anything is completely out of touch with reality.

The United States government, world-wide banks and foreign governments all rely on our debt as a safe hedge against inflation in their own countries. Our debt is sold as inflation-protected treasury bonds that growing and stagnant economies alike buy to make sure catastrophes in their own economies/banks don't wipe out them out. And the need for the debt is increasing with increased world-wide trade, off-shore production and international humanitarian efforts (earthquakes, floods, etc.), hence why the treasury bond rates have declined by so much.

If the US government were to reduce the amount of debt it produces, treasury bond rates would increase not only increasing the cost of lending for consumers and banks, but also limiting the liquidity of money being moved around to hedge international risks which in turn would probably create another massive recession.

Unfortunately, the only way to fix things is to reduce the need for others to buy our debt. Either by helping to improve foreign economies (so they need less debt to hedge against their own inflation/deflation), improving the economy in our own country (so our people need less debt) by creating jobs or reducing taxes on those with the most debt (while giving incentives to reduce their debt), plug holes in tax code and banking regulations to stop rampant speculation on markets (that causes national and international instability as well as a massive amount of lending when investors buy things on margin), or reducing the over-accumulation of wealth into fewer hands (a few people with lots of money causes massive risks).

The first two needs require a massive amount of spending and the last two require a major overhaul of the tax code system, banking regulations and tax rates that give incentives for executives to leave money in the company and hire more people (like the income tax rates of the 1930s-50s and corporate tax rates aimed at median income targets). All are necessary, but it's very unlikely anymore than two will ever happen at once because of the two party political system in power.

Since one particular party doesn't want any increased spending and no tax increases at all, the economy is going to continue to suffer and if things aren't corrected the US' debt will become a worthless hedge for others that will lead to a run on the bank to turn it in, causing an economic collapse unlike the world has ever seen.

Tellingly, from the report I read the Republicans were actually willing to raise taxes, but only for the middle and lower class and as long as the highest income bracket got a permanent 7% reduction in their marginal tax rate (from 35% to 28%).

The problem with that is "Why but the cow if you're giving the milk away for free"? What incentive would Republican politicians have to deal fairly with tax increases once they've achieved a bunch of spending cuts? They'd just insist that even more cuts need to be made. I think Obama learned from the Health care debacle that trying to meet the Republicans half way, just leads to them demanding that he walk another half of the way, and then another half of the way, and so on.

Also the vast majority of "simplified" tax schemes are thinly veiled tax giveaways to the rich. A flat tax always hurts the people at the bottom end a lot more than it does the people at the top end. Because there a minimum costs to living a reasonable life and those costs decline as percentage of your income as your income rises, below the poverty line those costs may be in excess of 100% of your income.

Lastly, it's really not "worth it" to collect $2 for each of the American citizens who are living below the poverty line. First it costs a lot more than $2 to collect that money through income taxes, and second they probably pay sales taxes on legitimate purchases so it's highly unlikely that there are many people that actually pay no taxes at all.

Oh, and the basic American tax system would probably work just fine if all the deductions were stripped out. Of course, you'd need a constitutional amendment to prevent the addition of deductions back into the system or the day after you new shiny tax system was in place both Democrats and Republicans would be trying to add deductions for their various sponsors and causes.

And from what I've read the Democrats aren't willing to cut anything unless taxes are raised to the point that nothing has to be raised

That's because the public overwhelmingly does not want them to do so. This is known as "listening to your constituents."

The GOP have listened to Grover Norquist, who is ONE constituent.

It kind of falls in nicely with the 1% vs. the rest of us issue that is pretty clearly established as our biggest political issue of this era.

The fact is that you cannot raise taxes high enough to eliminate the deficit.

Clinton did. In fact, the math and the facts overwhelmingly demonstrate that Bush's tax cuts on the rich are the primary structural driver of our deficit. The other being the wars that Bush dragged us into for no reason.

Entitlements will consume 100% of revenue eventually unless the are radically reformed.

This is also known as a lie. Social Security could be made solvent for another 75 years by simply raising the cap on taxes for those making more than 106k. Medicare can be made solvent by ending the ridiculous conditions imposed on it by Bush's part D abomination that the government cannot negotiate for lower drug prices.

The shame is that clearly the Democrats are not interested in any compromise because any entitlement reform, however badly needed for the good of the nation

. . . so you need to steal my Social Security benefits to pay off Bush's wars? To hell with that bullshit. I EARNED MY MOTHERFUCKING SOCIAL SECURITY. That money IS MINE. I am not giving it up so that some gold-plated CEO can have his second motherfucking yacht.

The shame is that the Republicans are listening to Grover Norquist and very obviously not hearing a single word the public has to say [washingtonpost.com], which is, in a nutshell:

* The public opposes the supercommittee âoemaking hundreds of millions of dollars in spending cuts to Medicare and Medicare through increasing beneficiary costs,â 76-19. A majority, 52 percent, strongly opposes these cuts.

* The public supports the supercommittee âoeincreasing taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations,â 66-31. A majority, 52 percent, strongly support these tax increases.

Democracy may be inconvenient to your ideology, but we are the majority and you are not. If you have a smidgeon of respect for it (which by your previous posts I can tell, you really don't) you will accept that an deal with it.

But, if like many Republicans you actually do NOT respect Democracy, the great thing is you are still going to just have to gag on that thing, and fucking deal with it. I do not care. Your movement and their ridiculous opinions do not matter anymore in US politics. The truth of this will become clear to you next year when we the 99% take your unearned power and rip it right the fuck out of your hands.

As much as I would have liked to beat up on the Ds they seemed to be more willing to compromise than the Rs. Both parties offered some sort of compromise but it seemed that the Ds were more sincere but it may have all been a facade. Also the Rs basically were in a great starting position since they didn't have to do anything and it would be 100% cuts*. Basically it gave both parties some talking points for the election.

* Remember in Washington a cut is just slower growth. The purpose of the super committee was to cut the projected debt 10 years out by 1.2 or so trillion dollars which could be accomplished if the next base line budget is about $120 billion less than it is currently projected to be. To put this in perspective so far this year the US Federal government has spent $3.6 trillion [usdebtclock.org] so $120 billion would be about 3% of our current budget, probably less

My understanding is this-- that the problem is, were republicans to compromise and increase taxes, increase debt ceiling, etc, everything the dems wanted, and in return secured cuts of several hundred billion, all the cuts would be postponed over the next 10 years so that they never happened, and meanwhile taxes WOULD be higher and borrowing would continue.

Its not because of who Dems are, its because of the nature of government. Governments will NEVER want to lower spending, it is phenomenally hard to do so-- even when default is around the corner (look at Greece). So, aside from already being a republican, I understand why you cant just compromise down the middle, because it will inevitably NOT be down the middle once the scores are all settled.

Honestly, I think its a little crazy to talk of super big spending cuts in military while we still have military forces out and about, but sure-- if they could release a budget for this year with equal cuts to entitlements and military THIS YEAR that would really stick, I would be for that.

As for raising taxes, the question becomes, if the government has spent the money it was given really really poorly, why do we want to give them more money to spend, rather than making them actually make the hard choices and fix their budget now? It seems an awful lot like getting another hit of heroin and promising everyone that NEXT week you'll go clean.

With all due respect I think you're making a false equivalence here. Please provide an example of how the Democrats are as extreme as Republican with regards to debt reduction. The Democrats have put their sacred cows on the table despite popular support for preserving the social safety nets. They've offered cuts to these programs in exchange for tax increases on the richest people in our country. Republicans have refused all discussion of tax increases without reservation. Not once have Republicans come to the table with a plan to raise taxes on the richest people in the country. The best they could do was a tax plan that effectively lowered the tax rates on the richest people while eliminating many itemized deductions that benefited the rest of us! So please do tell us where the Democrats were extreme during any part of these discussions.

this is the biggest point, exactly. The republicans were willing to address "revenue increases", but only if this was a trade with reducing taxes on the highest bracket. This is the biggest insincerity I could imagine. To basically attempt to only raise taxes on middle class, when the numbers obviously show that this is the section of the population that cant afford it. I normally back most of what was call the Bush tax cuts, as there were a lot of pieces that helped many people, and a few things in trade that helped only a few people. Now it has become a farce in that the only bargaining point is to destroy the pieces that are good for most.

It's the same party that said:
People earning over $250K a year are not rich. . . Teachers earning over $50K are rich and greedy for not wanting to accept fewer benefits and pay.
Warren Buffet is a great example of capitalism . . . unless he disagrees with our tax plan, then he's socialist."

Republicans: We need to increase spending on the military and cut everything else and we need to cut taxes on the rich.

The Republicans are actually preparing a bill which will cancel the automatic military cuts, and they were willing to raise taxes on the middle class in exchange for tax cuts for the rich. They seem to have little real interest in balancing the budget.

Why doesn't anyone recongnize that if you took every penny from the top 1% we'd still be completely screwed because we spend way too much.

Because that's not actually true. The richest Americans have about $1 trillion in cash reserves and American corporations have about $1.5 trillion in cash reserves. That's money that's not doing anything other than earning interest. There's an interesting argument to be made that that money is being kept out of the economy because taxes on the rich and corporations are actually too low.

Wealth is being concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest Americans. The top 400 have about as much wealth as the bottom 50%. This means that the rewards of society are overwhelming going to the richest Americans, which probably means they aren't paying as much as they should in taxes. After all you'd expect the people profiting from the status quo to pay to maintain it, right?

The problem is that almost any agency you want to cut has some strong constituents and with that some fairly substantial amounts of money involved which can be used for political campaigns. If you cut a whole agency in particular or do "disproportional" cuts compared to other agencies, that implies those federal workers plus contractors plus communities where those agencies have major facilities are going to be complaining. That is easily several million dollars in campaign contributions that can easily be used to finance an opponent in select districts (especially where those key facilities are located at).

As a result, nothing gets cut because everybody in Congress is paranoid about eliminating anything, for fear of losing their position if they vote for these major cuts that are almost universally acknowledged as being needed. You can say you are in favor of a balanced budget, but when you have to deal with specific details about what actually needs to be cut it becomes a completely different story. It is easy to be in favor of cutting an agency that isn't in your district, but eventually even those congressmen have to cave in just to make sure that their favorite federal agency isn't cut.

This is what you are asking for when you demand taxes be raised. Sure you may just want to soak the rich guy, I mean its hardly fair he has more than you do. What you really get is that money going to more bureaucracy that much more overhead in your daily life, and that much more of a boost to politicians patronage powers. That means that much less "Democracy" and that much more oligarchy in a country that has far too much of the later.

Horseshit twice over.1) The "lofty 1% realm" now takes home a quarter -- *a quarter* -- of all US income. And the wealth disparities are even greater, because there are huge accumulated assets.2) Money works harder in the hands of poor people than in the hands of rich people. Rich people save or buy assets like land, more than they spend. Poor people spend money on daily necessities.

WW2 crushed the US economy. Gasoline, coffee, sugar, meat, cheese, etc were all rationed because the domestic economy was being destroyed by the war effort.

Shortly after the war is a different story of course. Then you have the US with it's industrial capacity diverted away from the war and to real economic production. Aided by the fact that almost every other industrial nation in the world had been bombed into oblivion and hence the US had a huge capital advantage and could pay high wages and produce better products cheaper than the rest of the world. But that was after the government got out of the way.

Completely taking tax increases off the table is stupid and shortsighted.

I'm not sure if you can lay it all on Norquist, but he's clearly the most powerful proponent of the stupidest, most obstructive Republicans in the budget mess. Norquist, the 96.5% of the Republicans in congress (238 of 242 House, 41 of 47 Senate) who signed his pledge, and every single Republican candidate won't do anything that raises taxes by a single dollar.

And check out this:

In a debate in August, Republican presidential candidates were asked whether they would support a budget deal that bundled $10 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. All said no. They rejected any deal that involved raising taxes.

So they hate raising taxes. We get it. These assholes still can't accept a proposal that goes in their favor 11 to 1? They reject it out of hand before even talking about what the spending cuts would be? Are they joking?!??!?

Who the fuck supports a platform, for a major party in a democratic republic, that says: "We get every single thing we want and you get nothing you want. If you don't comply, we'll watch it all burn until you give it."

So they hate raising taxes. We get it. These assholes still can't accept a proposal that goes in their favor 11 to 1? They reject it out of hand before even talking about what the spending cuts would be? Are they joking?!??!?

Tax increases have to be repealed. Note that noone ever write a tax increase with a built-in expiration date.

Spending cuts are only meaningful for this year's budget. Future congresses are in no way obligated to honor an agreement to cut spending made last year. Hell, they're not even obligated to honor an agreement to cut spending made by THEM THIS YEAR.

And finally, note that we've not had a Federal Budget for the entire Obama Presidency. Just a series of continuing resolutions. The Dems in the Senate stopped doing budget in 2008 so they wouldn't be hammered by their budget in the 2008 elections. And they've pretty much kept it up since then. The Republican House does a budget, sends it to the Senate, the Senate ignores it.

Without a real Federal Budget, we're not going to actually get ANY spending cuts, even if both Parties agree to them.

Who the fuck supports a platform, for a major party in a democratic republic, that says: "We get every single thing we want and you get nothing you want. If you don't comply, we'll watch it all burn until you give it."

Sounds like the Dems, alright. Oh, you meant the Reps? Alas, both Parties are dancing to that tune right now. Don't put all the blame on the one side unless you're trying to show which Party you support.

And note that by putting all the blame on the OTHER Party, you just convince everyone to who doesn't already support YOUR Party that your arguments are meaningless.

In fact, the very wealthy pay a far lower percentage on their money earned that you do. Warren Buffet himself has stated that his secretary, who probably earns a $60,000 to $80,000 per year salary, pays a higher percentage of her income as taxes than he does, and most people cannot even fathom what Buffet makes per year (hint: more than a billion).

While YOU are paying taxes (probably automatically deducted from your paycheck), you're likely having 25% to 30% of your pay going into taxes.

The rich have most of their income coming not from "working" (i.e., payroll), their income is coming from the stock market, where their money is making money for them. These are "capital gains", which are taxed at 15% -- let me repeat that in case you missed it -- at least 10% lower or maybe as much as half of what YOU are taxed at.

And that assumes that they are being completely honest with their incomes. Most of the wealthy have complicated accounting, offshore accounts, tax havens, and other grey-area dodges/loopholes that allow many of them to come in well under the 15% tax rate.

Anyone who assumes that the Rich are paying their fair share is either naive, or woefully misinformed.

Exxon Mobile for example, paid ZERO corporate taxes last year, in fact, they were GIVEN money by the government in the form of energy subsidies. General Electric also paid ZERO corporate taxes. This is while they are laying off thousands and raking in record profits.

Please find me an example of any wealthy individual or corporate entity that pays as much in taxes by percentage as the rest of us do.

Why should a rich person that makes $1M pay $500,000 for the same services and protections from their country that a poor person that contributes absolutely nothing to society and receives $25,000?

Well one major reason is that if you are sitting on a big pile of money then you need the rule of law (ie: FBI, Secret Service, etc) and the military to keep someone else from stealing it. The rich have far more to lose that the poor so it is entirely appropriate they pay a little more for their increased need for protection. This is especially the case with regard to our armed forces as the very rich are often not the people who actually sign up to give their lives in our defence. Even the poor who do not serve their country directly still often suffer more emotionally as they are also more likely to see friends and family go off to war then never come home.

What most people don't realize is that most of this "extra profit to invest in something else to create more jobs" is complete hogwash.

The stats are there to prove it by miles. They horde it and sit on it when times are bad because at the end of the day if they are making money NOW and they can see everything going to shit around them, they need to have money for if it gets worse, inadvertently making everything worse in the process.

The only way to pry it out of these assholes is to take it IE TAX it away. The government is guaranteed to spend it on something, and that something is almost certainly going to help somehow. How much we don't know, but anything is better than nothing.

Understand that most of what they are talking about is reductions in spending INCREASES, not cuts, ala Military. In the current lingo: You spend $100 in 2011, you planned to spend $125 in 2012. If you only spend $100 in 2012, it's called a 25% cut in the military... In most cases (by default), government spending goes up by 8% per year. If it only increase 4%, every screams "cut my program by 4%". Again, all of this rests on the ASSUMPTION that we have a budget, which we do not. The United States has not passed a budget in about 3 years...

The reason they're not getting anywhere with spending cuts is the game has been rigged in favor of spending increases in the first place.

They have generous rates of increase built into the budgeting process. All of the so-called "cuts" are actually (slight) decreases to the rate of increase.

They could plug up the deficit merely by having slightly greater increase rate decreases.

Anyways, they can cut now, or they can have the universe cut for them. There's a limit to how much you can just keep spending pretend money.

A related rant is how Congress has gotten around the 27th amendment. That was supposed to say there should be an election in between Congressional pay raises. But they came up with a process whereby they get automatic cost of living increases without voting on it. Flagrantly unconstitutional. It's the same sort of thing.

And it's not just the government that does that, businesses do it too. Over the past few years we have seen consumers cutting back personal budgets which causes businesses and governments to increase prices or look for other sneaky ways to get more money from people in order to make their next budget cycle. Which then causes consumers to cut back even more, which then causes business to increase prices even more... and so on.

The whole thing is about to implode here at some point if businesses and government don't recognize that they need to seriously cut spending just like us normal people have been doing. You can't have infinite budget increases when the economy is going the opposite direction.

I say we all get together and agree to not re-elect a single member of Congress. We could clear the entire House next year and a decent chunk of the Senate. I don't care if the new members are democrats, republicans, blue, green, red, or purple, it just seems like the entrenched politics is completely broken.

Did you not pay attention to the 2010 elections? Many were kicked out because they wanted something new. Now we have even WORSE people in office. Change for the sake of change rarely works. Quit saying this. Vote for people that back your views, or at the very least vote for the least evil if that doesn't exist.

I don't know why everyone tries to be "fair" and blame the Republicans and Democrats equally for not "compromising." Any rational person knows that it makes no sense trying to close a budget deficit without raising taxes and undoing some of the damage of the Bush years (when he cut taxes for the wealthy, estate taxes, capital gains taxes, etc.) The Republicans were never going to agree to anything, but they get to play the blame game as usual.

Says who? Every time we get into one of these debt crises, people say we have to cut spending and raise taxes. And in the end, the taxes get raised, but the spending never actually gets cut, and so the Government just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It's gotta stop somewhere. That's why I say no tax increases until we've really cut spending. Like not a small decrease in the rate of future increases, more like 10% actual cuts across the board, including both entitlement programs and the military.

And in the end, the taxes get raised, but the spending never actually gets cut, and so the Government just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

Actually spending went down during the Clinton years as percentage of GDP, which is the metric that matters. The last time before that when spending went down was during the Kennedy/Johnson administration.

You should note that there is no a priori "right" level of expenditures. You can choose to create a Haiti still level of government services in which case 10% of GDP in government expenditures would be too high, or you can create a cradle-to-grave, free education, free health care, safe streets, government backed pensions, system like in Sweden, and if you can provide that for 30% of GDP you are getting the deal of the century.

So rather than asking for more or less government spending, how about asking for efficient government programs for a change?

I'm a european working for an American company, and have always been impressed with how American companies do business, their aggressive plans and the "everything is up for grabs" mentality. Lately however, I've been equally unimpressed by the opposite, here we are, facing a massive problem, and the American politicians are behaving like babies.
The response? Smoke weed on wall-street!

It is, of course, the same picture in Europe. Governments aren't capable of delivering pain to their core supporters and therefore can't deliver rational solutions to the most serious problems they face.

The answer is to swap governments - the Dutch elect the Greek government and the Greeks elect the Dutch government, for example. The electorate is sufficiently detached to evaluate the choices more dispassionately, but have sufficient incentive to be diligent as they know if they really cock it up they'll be shafted in turn.

The answer is to swap governments - the Dutch elect the Greek government and the Greeks elect the Dutch government, for example. The electorate is sufficiently detached to evaluate the choices more dispassionately, but have sufficient incentive to be diligent as they know if they really cock it up they'll be shafted in turn.

Close, actually. IMHO all parties ("both parties" for you USians) should agree together to stand down to form a time-limited technocratic austerity government. This would be a sacrificial government - the political parties can be certain these guys don't get re-elected because the measures necessary will be deeply unpopular.

And if we're REALLY lucky, the people will actually prove the original political parties wrong in the next election and re-elect some of the more successful technocrats.

The game that's been going on for over a year is simple:1. Make demands in exchange for continuing to have a functioning government after some deadline.2. "negotiate" with the Democrats until several hours before the deadline.3. Democrats blink, make an 11th-hour deal with Republicans to give them about 95% of their original demands.4. Democrats declare victory and tell their constituents that the 5% that they got is worth it. Their constituents, apparently not as stupid as the Democratic politicians, don't believe them.5. Republicans declare victory, and tell their constituents that the 5% cost was worth it, because they'll get rid of it soon enough. They then locate the next deadline they can use.

I surprised everyone is fooled by this. The solution to the problem at hand is obvious... Cuts in both military spending as well as social programs, and ending the Bush tax cuts... in fact, we probably need even more than that. But how can the republicans raise taxes and cut military spending and then go home and get re-elected? How can democrats cut social spending and not invent some new "screw the rich" tax? It would require a diabolical plan... pass a law that says if a special committee cant agree on a plan, all these things happen... Then find people to be on the committee that are all as far left and right as possible so that, not only will they not agree, but their respective electorate will praise them for not making a deal with those evil republicans/democrats. Taxes go up, spending goes down, everyone can blame everyone else... It's perfect! The only problem? Even this wasn't enough. We're still doomed.

F*** what I wouldn't give for the Clinton years again. Smart president, likes a little scandal, smart Republican congress, keeping each other in balance with COMPROMISE and working together. Ignoring that whole ridiculous impeachment thing (personally, I'm happier when the President is known to be getting some.)

Now? Well meaning, if weak (first term-itis), President, diametrically opposed Republican Congress who are caught between a rock and a hard place trying to embrace the Tea Party while ignoring its ridiculous 'no compromise' policies.

I remember when I first heard about the tea-party, it sounded good. People wanting common sense and a return to 'founding father' kinds of ways. Then it became popular and got hijacked by the whack jobs. The founding fathers espoused compromise and working together - the tea party? Hell no, "My way or the highway" is more their tune.

Government meant to operate in balance cannot operate when one part of the government simply will not work with the others.

Do I want my taxes to go up? F*** no. Should they go up to solve debt problems in addition to cutting spending? Of course. Make corporations making over 10 million dollars actually pay taxes? What a crazy idea...

that one side was willing to compromise. One side wants to cut entitlements, the other to raise taxes. Republicans say: the Democrats wouldn't compromise and do it all by cutting entitlements. The Democrats say: the Republicans wouldn't compromise and do it with a mix of taxes and entitlement cuts.

Just read the two statements in the summary. Nothing else is necessary.

Republican: "Our Democratic friends were never able to do the entitlement reforms. They weren't going to do anything without raising taxes."

Democrat: "The wealthiest Americans who earn over a million a year have to share too. And that line in the sand, we haven't seen Republicans willing to cross yet."

I mean, one of those is clearly a bald-faced misrepresentation: this is made clear within the statement itself. In the first sentence he flatly claims that Democrats would not "do the entitlement reforms". In the very next sentence he makes it clear that this is simply a lie: Democrats were entirely ready to do entitlement reforms, but on the condition that they were accompanied by tax increases. You know, compromise. That thing two sides who don't agree are supposed to do for the greater good.

The Democrat, by contrast, simply states that the Republicans would not agree to anything that included tax rises - whatever entitlement cuts were involved.

I just don't see where's the room for interpretation or greyness there. From their own statements it's quite clear that the Republicans are a) fundamentally dishonest and b) utterly unwilling to compromise.

Yep. They're more interested in "winning" for their party than helping the country. They were never going to agree.

OTOH the result is good. There's no way to decide who should get cuts because every department in government is lead by professional liars and bullshit artists. The only answer is to cut every single department by the same percentage.

The problem is: there *are* no cuts. The so-called cuts are reductions in planned increases. Government spending continues to go up - just less than it otherwise might have. This is not success.

Anyway, the amount they were supposed to cut was a joke. They were supposed to trim 1.2 trillion over 10 years. That's 120 billion per year. But again - not off the current spending, but off of planned increases. The result would still have been a net increase.

Idiots re-arranging the deck furniture on the Titanic. It would be entertaining if it weren't so frustrating.

Most politicians don't make their fortunes from government checks they make it from sweetheart deals and insider trading. Taking their pay away wouldn't hurt them in fact they would have to be extra corrupt to make up for the lost income.

I don't mind paying for the elderly, but the program needs to be cut off at its knees now because it is the height of injustice to expect us and Generation X to fund such a horribly mismanaged program now that the Boomers want to retire. They had 1994-2008 to right the ship of state, to try to rebuild the trust fund (which was destroyed on their parents' watch) and ran one of the most irresponsible periods of American government in our history.

To reach that conclusion, you have to have missed a lot of important information:1. In the late 1980's, the federal government, acting on the advice of Alan Greenspan and others, increased payroll taxes specifically to build up a giant pile of cash for the Boomers to retire on.2. The Social Security Administration took that pile of cash and invested it in US Treasury bonds, as required by law. They invest in US Treasuries primarily to prevent the risk of corruption and to reduce the risk that the pile of cash will disappear.3. Congress took that same cash that was invested in US Treasuries, started treating that as income, and spent it, effectively kicking the can down the road.4. If the general US budget pays off the US Treasuries held by the Social Security Administration, then Social Security will be fine for at least another 40 years.

The only reason Social Security is declared to be in some sort of crisis mode is because it's demanding that the loans they made to the rest of the government be paid back.

The equivalent of this in the private sector would be raiding the pension fund, and then telling people who go to collect on their pensions "Sorry, the money is gone".